• To build a center on a former mall

    A mixed-use center is the best way to maximize value from a vacant mall site, but it requires proactive city leadership, as seen in Huntsville.
    MidCity District in Huntsville, Alabama, is a 140-acre mixed-use development on the site of the former Madison Square Mall, built in 1984. As the name implies, it is centrally located to the sprawling Rocket City and its largest employment centers, about three miles west of downtown. The District...Read more

  • For the love of mimosas, see Mashpee Commons

    Cape Cod boasts many things, including the first conversion of a sterile strip mall to a village center. It’s a model for what to do with thousands of dead and dying malls.
    My first professional work out of college was on Cape Cod in the 1980s. I read National Geographic, and I loved the photos of village architecture and the picturesque harbors featured in their coverage of the region. Having grown up and studied in Pennsylvania, I had a romantic notion of New...Read more

  • Turning a dead mall into a downtown is not easy, but worth the effort

    As the US seeks a long-term use for hundreds of dead malls, cities can put their faith in urbanism.
    We are amid a massive repurposing of shopping malls in the US. Bill Fulton, author of The Future of Where substack, cites estimates of the US shrinking from 3,000 regional malls down to 200. Alan Ehrenhalt, contributing editor of Governing magazine, explains that the malls have been dying for two...Read more

  • Mapping the culture and retrofit of a car-oriented community

    A Framework Plan for Cherokee Village envisions retrofitting a partially built 20th-century new town. University of Arkansas Community Design Center won a Merit Award in The Region: Metropolis, City and Town category of the 2025 CNU Charter Awards.
    Cherokee Village is a mid-20th-Century planned new town that failed to reach its full potential. After 70 years, only 20 percent of the lots are built, housing a population of about 5,000 people. It was planned for 60,000 people, served by nearly 300 miles of roads over 21 square miles of northern...Read more